One Thought: Part Two by Probe

Title: One thought part two
Author: probe
Email address: PalmerDolph@yahoo.com
Category: post invasion, angst
Rating: PG : language, a little grossness
Spoilers: no
Disclaimers: please don't sue me, I'm a very loyal fan making absolutely no money from this
Summary: what if Krycek had gotten to the alien fetus before the faceless rebels you really need to read part one to get the full gist
Thank you: MaybeAmanda is the greatest beta reader in the history of all beta readers and I am in continual awe of her superior brain. Also thank you to Franthewonderhorse for being so amazingly supportive. You are my favorite invisible friend. And thank you to everyone who emailed me about wanting a sequel; highly motivating!

Early November 2000
Eastern Colorado
Just outside Camp Four human territories
No Man's Land

Like this big guy, Vaughn, who was smoldering beside me. There we were, both face down in the dirt and waiting for the alien hover ship to pull away. You don't move, they don't see you. Easy enough to remember.

But the big moron had to look back and motion for Scully to stay still. He even whispered, "Don't be afraid, just stay still." When they zapped him, that idiot Vaughn probably thought he was dying a hero.

Don't be afraid?! It took all my willpower not to crack a smile. For Dana Scully, 'don't be afraid' was a joke. In all the swarms of killer bees, exploding cities and baby aliens feasting on human flesh, I still had not once seen Dana Scully afraid. It was part of what kept me at her side, what drew me to her in the first place. I'd been scrambling to stay alive for so long. I guess I wanted a little of what she had. Scully never scrambled.

The hover ship moved on. Gotta love that blast of white light. I was rubbing spots out of my eyes after the ship took off. It was dark and I couldn't see a fucking thing. Please tell me we can go back to the camp now.

"Get up." Scully was at my side and yanking on my prosthetic. How many times do I have to tell the bitch not to do that?

"It's what I said," came the bass whisper of Johansson. "Women don't belong out on these hunts."

Oh fucking great. I was on my feet and forcing my pupils wide until I could see again. Johansson was a barrel-chested Ex cop and he looked at me like I was a punk kid he would have liked to arrest back when he had a badge and a jail. "Vaughn should have been minding his own business."

"Scully was an FBI agent before the invasion. She can handle herself," I said, but that kind of logic was going nowhere with old school Johansson.

"And when she can't, I take care of her." There was the beat of a second where I wondered if I'd judged correctly and the macho posturing would work on these country cops. I just hoped like hell that Scully wasn't about to crack up laughing or behind me.

But it looked like I'd assessed the Camp Four honchos pretty well. Johansson and the others nodded with comprehension. Scully was my woman as far as they knew and Vaughn had overstepped his bounds to try and protect her.

I turned to face the laser eyed hatred from Scully. It made her angry to be confronted with any kind of dependence even when the two of us were getting along, which we weren't at the moment. She preferred to barely acknowledge that we were traveling together. Too bad, Bitch; you wanted to come on this little alien base raid.

Oh, I knew what she was thinking. She was going to find Mulder, and then she was going to drag his poetry quoting Sappy ass back with us to the murder and starvation paradise that was Camp Four.

The tension over the cause of Vaughn's death was pushed aside and we all turned back to the distant blue glow of the alien base. I made sure to wait for Scully and look more territorial.

So now it was Johansson, me, Scully and the three remaining camp honchos on the raid. Too big a group in the first place if you ask me, but hey, my covert operations training on two continents wouldn't impress the band of small town cops and survivalists who make the decisions at Camp Four.

We trudged over the frozen mud and scrub grass. At least the wind was at our backs.

Scully stumbled at my side, scowling as usual. I tried to drop behind her, save her from some of the wind. "Listen," I told her, careful that the others wouldn't hear. "We should just hang back this time. Let these guys think they're showing us the ropes."

She pursed her lips at me like she had a lot to say and didn't trust herself not to shout. We let the others get ahead of us.

"Or maybe you should turn back, let me check things out," I repeated for the hundredth time that day. "Let me get a feel for what Mulder wants. " I wanted to see what I could deal. Mulder might have access to food and weapons, or maybe he could get us on board with the winning side. Oh, I wasn't about to trade him any of that shit for Scully. She was my talisman. I'd earned her, and I'd earned the redemption she was going to bring me. But I could let him think I'd trade. The Mulder I'd known would believe anything.

Scully cocked an eyebrow at me. Even angry and dirty the woman was all control and certainty. And, for the most part, she really did take care of herself. When the others were far enough in front, she finally spoke, "Do what you want, Krycek."

She nodded at me and stumbled again. I had to catch her a little with my good arm and she pulled away so fast she nearly fell again. "Okay, so maybe he was looking for you," I said. "But," and here was the source of our disagreement "maybe it was the chip he sensed."

"Or maybe it was just the fact that the listening device was working that he sensed."

She stopped to look me in the face and I nearly plowed into her. Johansson and the others glanced back at us with a few curious looks. I would have bet my next meal that they thought Scully was begging me to be careful or telling me she was afraid or some such bullshit.

"So what if it was," she said. "I found him. We can help him." She looked down and the wind whipped the ends of her hair against my face. "Or he can help us."

This time when I brought my arm around her, I didn't let her step away or squirm free. My face was close to hers. "He isn't on your side anymore, Scully," I whispered between gritted teeth. I didn't want Johansson getting too far ahead of us so I released her from my hold.

That look might have scared Mulder but it only made me want to fight. "You haven't seen him for two years. You haven't heard from him for two years. You don't know what they've done to him or who he is anymore."

Even in the darkening sky, I could see that her eyes were getting wet and it made my stomach drop. I'd seen her cry plenty of times. In the beginning when she couldn't save someone she was treating. Or when we were cold and hungry in the mud trenches the first year and Diana Fowley's voice was reassuring us from loud speakers to trust the aliens. Or even the first time, in the first camp, when she saw camp leaders, another band of terrified men trying to keep order, carve the chip from a young boy's neck and then execute him. She wasn't made of stone.

I didn't want to make her cry. Through all this hell I was not to blame for one tear from Dana Scully. It seemed like a sin to me in a way, to shake that coolness from her. I was fucking up.

"Scully," I pleaded. I could hear it in my voice and I just counted my breaths until my stomach unknotted. Come on Scully, please just don't cry.

"What do you want me to do?" I finally whispered. I felt like shit inside. I never felt like this before I started trying to save my soul. Redemption sucks ass.

She turned away from me and we continued our miserable trek to the alien base. "We'll lose them if we don't hurry," she said.

Krycek was worried about that listening device. It hadn't worked on anybody but me in the three days since I'd worn it. It was only a matter of time before someone suggested putting it back on me and realized why it worked. I think his enthusiasm for this raid was a way of distracting everyone from trying the device on me again.

Usually they removed the chip, then the host was killed and the body burned. Because even burning didn't destroy the chip, it was left out in an open area for the aliens to find. Reclaim.

I'd been so certain when I'd worn the listening device that Mulder could see me, could hear me. But I can't deny that Krycek's argument hadn't worn on me all day. What had Mulder been trying to tell me when I'd seen him at that base? He had been kneeling in one spot with his eyes closed and not acknowledged my "presence" at all. Was he telling me to stay away?

I shook my head to clear all the doubts. He needed me. And I needed to find him. This fight was so hard, sometimes too hard. And I felt so alone.

The blue lights of the base shot into the sky in pillars and marked the perimeter of the underground base. I'd been in one before, to place explosives in an attack. An attack which was ultimately crushed by the aliens, of course. The alien bases were really very similar to what I remembered about the ship Mulder had pulled me from in the Antarctic: cold, dark, lots of metal winding corridors and vast open pits for maneuvering between the corridors.

When Johansson came to the hover ship exit, he crouched low and crawled over to the closest blue pillar. These pillars marked rounded vent shafts leading down into the base.

At the vent, Johansson kicked aside a trap door made of sticks and dried mud and steam wafted up parallel to the blue beam. The aliens detected you in a second if you made contact with the blue light. We were all breathing hard, afraid to even whisper as we waited our turn to slide in. The vent shaft was wet and muddy at the top and the blue light lined one side. We had to flatten to the far side of the shaft as we slid down. Krycek was behind me and then on top of me, shielding me from the light and sending me down faster into the base than the careful progress I'd been making. Even with that prosthetic arm he was more agile than any of us making the descent. I thought about the training he'd had to make him so good at stealth work and the terrible ways he'd used that training. I think he read it in my face because he was grinning at me like he always does when he realizes he's offended me.

Inside, the base was like the others I'd been in: A freezing, barely lit, near empty maze of metal and dripping water. Johansson motioned for us to follow him and we crept along in single file. Krycek was so close behind me that I could feel his breath on my neck.

We spiraled downward as we followed the corridor. Finally, We came to a ladder leading about ten feet up towards a door and Johansson started up it. This must have been where they were salvaging, actually stealing, all the junk they had taken.

"Storeroom" whispered Krycek. I didn't want to see in a storeroom full of alien appliances.

Krycek's face went white with anger. He gripped my arm and tried to force me up the ladder in front of him. The others were already inside the metal door and it was creaking closed.

I'd gotten in plenty of these physical struggles with Krycek in our two years together. He tried to force me to take shelter in bombings or tried to pull me back into the trenches when I had leapt up to stop others from going to the aliens, or even to keep me from the injured during bee attacks. So I knew it was a losing battle; he was stronger and a better fighter than I was. I let myself be carried up the ladder and through the metal door and he tossed me on the floor like it had hardly cost him any effort.

The room was just what I'd pictured: a big damp space, piled with things we humans either didn't know how or couldn't use.

I rubbed at my arm while Krycek stood between me and the door with that same furious stance.

"Don't worry," I grumbled. "I won't make a run for it if that's what you're thinking."

"Shit!" Johansson yelled. "Take cover!" The men dove into the stacks, trying to hide. I hate to agree with Krycek about anything but they really were idiots.

Krycek and I both dropped face down on the muddy, wet floor, and tried not to breathe. The juvenile aliens were just like the hover ships outside: don't move and you won't be seen. They stepped on Krycek like he was garbage. It had to hurt but he didn't make a sound and let himself get tossed over on his back without blinking. The safest thing would be to close your eyes but neither of us ever did.

Behind me, Johansson and the others were screaming as they were ripped apart. Rivulets of blood made their way to where I sprawled on the floor and soon I was face down in gore. At least it was warm.

If I could have just pulled the damn prosthesis out from under my spine then my outlook on life would have been so much better.

They'd left me face up looking at the ceiling and from where I was left by the dripping alien brat-pack, I couldn't see Scully. She was behind me somewhere, closer to where those things were dining on Camp Four's finest.

She was worrying me some. Finding Mulder had brought back a little more of the old Scully than I would have liked. . I'd forgotten how rabidly devoted she could be to that sap ass Mulder. I stared at the corrugated ceiling and thought, Please God don't let her sprint for the door trying to get to him.

The aliens were out the door before I could fully consider what clout a request from me would have with God.

When I turned around I saw Scully was still on the floor, but now covered in blood. No, no, come on God. You can't do this to me, Dude.

"What are you looking at?" she snapped at me. She was having a hard time pushing herself up because of the blood and alien slime.

"I thought you were hurt," I said simply. What WAS that shit the alien's dripped? When I went to help her up, I tried to scrape some of it from her face. It was gooey and stuck to my hand.

"Good," I shot back. I like this "fine" thing she does. It would be such a pain in the ass if she needed me to baby her or even to really talk. I like how she always seems as contented as I am to just move on from whatever nearly kills her. She pulled off her denim jacket and then her sweater. Underneath was a tight black t-shirt she didn't look half bad in. The sweater got most of the gunk off her face but she had to be freezing.

We both moved slowly from the room and down the ladder. Neither of us looked once in the direction of the alien monster feast.

Back in the corridor I pulled her into my leather jacket and she didn't resist. Her teeth had been chattering and I'm not a bad guy. Or at least I was trying not to be.

We weren't headed back to the vent but I didn't hassle her. The place was so empty I thought maybe it was alien naptime. I wanted to look around myself.

When we heard voices, I pushed us both to the slimy dripping wall. Human voices, it sounded like. Maybe someone screaming or shouting? Then, more voices. From my past experiences I would have identified it as an interrogation of some sort.

She had this strange look on her face. Her forehead making those worry creases I had learned to recognize as proof she was distressed. She didn't answer but shrugged out from my jacket and just kept moving down the bend of the corridor.

"Scully!" I whispered as harshly and loudly as I dared. That pack of the juvenile aliens was still in my mind and probably not so far away. She was around the next bend and out of my sight without even looking back.

From behind me came the scuffle of the pack moving across the grated metal floor. If she hadn't heard me then I would have bet she wouldn't have heard them either. The floor was already shaking.

Even though my body was on top of hers, I could feel the trembling grates of the corridor floor. In moments they'd be nearly on top of us.

Up ahead of us the talking and the shouting had stopped and I could hear the heavy clank of a metal door being slammed. Don't move Scully, I thought. Don't blink. Don't breathe hard.

Cold slime dripped onto the back of my neck. One of them was checking us out. It gingerly placed his claw on my back. FuckFuckFuck. Scully had goose bumps on her flesh. Don't let your teeth chatter, Scully. Don't shiver.

There was a burst of steam from above and the monsters scattered and pressed back from us. The metal door clanged open again and white bio suits came at us. In back of us, the alien pack was riled up but the steady bursts of steam kept them away. Arms pulled me off of Scully and hauled her up from the floor. I tried to grab her, but the heat from the steam was fucking killing me. My eyes were tearing and I choked on the shit. It felt like getting maced.

I reached out towards a flash of red hair and clutched the stuff like a lifeline. The biosuits dragged us ahead through the clanking metal door. I had finally shut my eyes against the chemical steam but my grip was still hard in Scully's hair. The door shut behind us and both Scully and I gulped in clean air.

My eyes cleared before Krycek's eyes did. I'd finally freed his hand from my hair but he held on to my arm like he expected them to wrench us apart. The two men in biosuits had deposited us near the door and shed their masks. They had gone back to a vertical table where I assumed they had their interrogation subject strapped down. I could only see the raised back of the table and the top of the man's head.

"Then who are these two?" One man yelled as he gestured towards Krycek and me. "They're here to rescue you, aren't they? They're part of your force here on the ground?"

It couldn't be who I thought it was. I moved forward to see but Krycek's hand held me in place.

I didn't like the sound of defeat in his voice. Something about his voice had reminded me of the past, of the person I used to be: capable, strong and sure of the rules of the world around me.

Krycek wobbled a little and I thought he was going to vomit again. Instead he sniffed back his streaming nose and stood up straight and a sour smile twisted impossibly at his mouth. He let me lead the two of us forward.

"Stay back you two!" one of the interrogators yelled. But I didn't need to come any closer. I could see the face of the man on the table. His eyes were blackened and he had lost weight but he was still every inch the imposing man he had been.

I thought he might cry. I tried to move towards him but both Krycek and one of the biosuited men held me back.

The two interrogators looked at me then and I felt like I had offered up whatever information they had been trying to beat from Skinner.

"Right," said the man and he smiled a tight oily smile that said, "You're lying."

"No one comes down a base for food. You are food down here," he said. He had gray hair and eyes and a pinched look about him. The other biosuited man was heavy set and younger looking. They both looked too soft and well fed to have spent much time in the world above ground. In back of them a set of glass doors opened and more biosuited men appeared. I didn't recognize any of them. I don't think they could have pried Krycek's hand from my arm if they'd tried, but they didn't. When the needle went in my arm I felt him latch the belt loop of my jeans to something on his jacket. I don't know why he thought they wouldn't just detach us once we had passed out.

I kept my eyes locked on Skinner's as long as I could, tried to will him some of my determination. Then I remembered, "Mulder?" I asked him, but he just stared back at me.

"Scully, Scully " he said. I'm not sure if he knew I was there or he thought he was dreaming me.

Mulder's name did catch the ears of all the biosuited men. The one who'd shot me full of whatever was taking me under drew back in surprise.

I never heard the answer: I fell back into Krycek and we both slid to the ground.

"God Damn!" My stomach heaved and my eyes felt like were on fire but that wasn't what I was yelling about. Diana Fowley's pointy toed shoe got me right in the balls.

In her pressed white suit and expensive heels, she looked like something from one of my "Bad Heaven" dreams. Like this one I have where I make it through the pearly gates holding on to the edge of Dana Scully's shirttails but get booted out at the next ID checkpoint. Wait, should Diana Fowley be running Gestapo operations in the after life? And what the fuck was holding my ear?

"Okay! I'm awake!" I repeated. I tried to stand. Bad idea. "Just," I slapped her polished nails off of their twisting fix on my ear, "Give me a second here."

It looked like I'd been dumped in a padded psych cell: no windows, no furniture, nothing I might injure myself on or make into a weapon. The walls and floor were spongy mats like I'd once trained on for hand-to-hand combat.

White of course. Someone had taken my clothes away and hosed me down. The prosthesis was still on but wet inside. Very uncomfortable. "Where's Scully?"

Diana nudged a metal crate with my clothes inside towards me. They looked laundered, and the laces on my hiking boots had been replaced. I tried not to gape at the miracle of clean clothes.

"Get dressed," Diana said. But I wasn't sure I could comply with that right away. I was dizzy and nauseous. What the fuck had been in those syringes?

"Where's Scully?" Yelling was not helping my symptoms die down. I rubbed my hand over my face. "Just answer, you fucking whore," I whispered.

Diana's face turned red. Ah hah, some color in all this antiseptic white. "Listen," I thought, maybe I should play nice. Maybe I should make sure they aren't just cleaning me up so they don't have to hold their noses when they kill me.

"Diana" I used a contrite inflection that I can do very well. "Come on, baby" (Can't we just forget about that "fucking whore" comment?) "Scully and I aren't a part of whatever Skinner was getting beaten out of him."

She crossed her arms and managed a look with a little less hostility. Surely she wasn't just going to take my word for it? "We just came here with a bunch of idiots in a shanty town close by; we came to see what we could pinch." I shrugged. Now this she has to believe.

I was trying to pull my thermal underwear on and my t-shirt. I thought if I could just get dressed and stand I might be able to kill her, find the way out of the padded cell and to where they had Scully

"Hey, it wasn't personal. I know you're probably fighting on a different side than those guys were and" the boots, the jacket, almost there " I got no problem with that. I can respect that." Now I just had to stand

"No problem," I slid back down. If I hadn't still been semi-loaded on the tranquilizer I would have rushed her and been on my way. But the world was still a little fuzzy. For the life of me I couldn't come up with a Plan B.

However, I could see Diana more clearly than at first. I have to say, alliance with the aliens did not seem to suit her. I mean, compared to girls above ground she looked pretty good. There was the tailored suit and the washed and styled hair and, could it be, perfume? I'm sure I smelled perfume.

But her eyes were shadowed and nervous and her lips were tight on her face. She'd aged the way that people under stress do. It wasn't attractive on her. And she must have known it because she didn't like me sizing her up.

She didn't move or answer. Was she afraid? "Okay then," I opened my hands, palms up to her. "We'll leave."

She shook her head and made a taut line of her lips. She was afraid, I was certain. But not of me, no way. The Diana I knew would have coolly blown my head off. No, scratch that. She would have had it blown off by someone else. Then, "Just you, Alex. Scully stays."

"No deal." I did stand up then and she backed up enough to keep the gun aimed at my chest. I felt pretty stable. I suppose killing her was worth a try.

"It isn't a deal, I'm telling you what to do." She let the gun drop to her side. What the fuck was going on here? "If your thinking of trying something, killing me even, it won't work. Scully's with Mulder and you'll never get past him."

I think the room was spinning. All that God Damn white made it impossible to know for sure. That indention in the padding, had to be the door right? "Let me out of here."

"Should?" I turned to face her. She really didn't look good. Her makeup was too heavy on the bags under her eyes. "I thought you were giving me an order."

Diana shoved the gun towards me. I stepped back in shock but then grabbed it away from her. "What are you afraid of? What's gone wrong here?"

Mulder? Pansy ass Mulder, who I could throw to the ground with one arm just as easily as with two? Mulder the cry baby, the poetry quoting love sick feebie.

I shook my head and smiled at Diana. "You knew what he was, the things done to him when he was a blob in a Petrie dish. Don't tell me it worked?"

"Of course it worked. It was Spender's pet project. The best geneticists in the world engineered him."

I waved her away and started for the door again. "I've heard it, Diana. I was assigned to boy genius myself once, remember?"

"He's the only one the aliens will communicate with. He negotiated our role helping them eradicate the population in exchange for our lives and comforts."

Oh man, the expression on her face was priceless after all the double crossing she'd done in her life. I couldn't help my smile. Payback is a bitch, Diana. Didn't anyone ever tell you that? "So they went back on the deal?"

It had been two years since I'd been in a real bed with sheets and pillows. Clean sheets, clean pillows. When I could keep my eyes open, all I could see were shadows. I was in someone's darkened bedroom. In someone's bed. I didn't think beyond that reality.

"That's how long I've been sleeping?" It was, perhaps, the most ridiculous conversation we had ever begun. After all that had happened in the world around us, the horrible fate of everything we knew. I couldn't seem to say more than this.

He looked older, more that the two years could account for, and he looked even more haunted than when we were on the worst cases, even worse than the times he'd been teased with Samantha and tormented with the tangles of conspiracy and Mulder family history.

He was chewing at his lower lip, his jaw working the way I'd seen it a million times before. His eyes were filled with apology. "You're going to have to go back to the camp. Krycek's waiting there for you."

I sat up. I was still in the filthy jeans and black t-shirt that I had been caught in. I brought a hand up to my face and brushed back some of my tangled hair.

He had never spoken to me like this before the aliens. I let my hand drop down to the bed again. I felt foolish to care about my looks when people were starving and cold in the camp I had just come from.

Mulder smiled at me and tapped between my breasts where my heart was beating like mad. "Here is where you're beautiful. Inside," he said.

We both reached for each other at the same time and crushed the other into a hug.

The tears came to me first for all the days that I had fought a losing battle above ground. And then I was sobbing because I'd had to fight it alone.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," he kept saying. My face was against his far too prominent collar bone and when I pulled back and held his face in my dirty hands, I was finally aware that something was wrong.

"Scully, I'm what you've been fighting against these two years. The aliens don't know this planet or us. They spent so long studying us and infiltrating our most powerful governing forces but they still couldn't determine the best way to wipe all of us out."

I let my hands drop from his face and he clutched them in his own. He looked like he had when they had drugged his water and he'd been manic and raging.

Mulder tipped his forehead against mine and closed his eyes but I was tense and afraid.

I drew back. "I don't believe you," I told him. "Open your eyes, look into mine and tell me that it isn't true."

He did open his eyes, his beautiful eyes, and they were as hard and as cold as I had seen them interviewing suspects. "You saw what they were doing to Skinner?"

I nodded. His grip on my hands was so strong that it hurt and I tried to pull away.

"I gave that order. I had him beaten. Skinner's been working with the Alien Rebels to end the takeover." He let go of my hands. "I gave the order to torture him until he revealed his contact with my people."

I looked at him. He was dressed in gray wool slacks and dark sweater that looked like the expensive cashmere I had always loved in my previous life.

Where I'd been sleeping the sheets were streaked with blood and dirt. Had he given up everything we'd believed in for these creature comforts? I thought that he must be congratulating himself for abandoning me at El Rico now that he could see the filth I had brought with me, that I was literally covered in. I thought he must be disgusted that I had ruined his pristine sheets. When I looked at him he winced as if in pain.

I remember him telling me in his apartment hallway that he didn't know if he wanted this fight if I wasn't by his side. And now I didn't know if I wanted it either.

Krycek told me every day that we were going to lose, that I was a fool for risking my neck to save people who were all going to die.

I started a little at the tone of his voice, flat and sure, more than his words. I'd heard that sad and certain tone before. In Gibson Praise, I thought.

"They trust me," Mulder said simply. "I was one of the first test subjects. Samantha too, only she was a disappointment to them." He had the cold look in his eyes again. "The aliens consider me one of them."

But your not, I was thinking. You're not one of them. I thought then about his first words to me, that he was sending me back. He nodded and I could tell he was grinding his teeth. His old habit from a different life.

He nodded again. "And you should try to kill me. We aren't on the same side anymore, Scully."

I didn't believe him, I couldn't. No matter what he had done, or given up to survive, I could never believe that Fox Mulder would be my enemy.

Back at the camp, Skinner had his wits about him enough to sit by Margaret Scully's bedside, make that sleeping bag side, and hold her hand while she died.

I'd had to drag him from the alien base for the first hundred yards. When the bastard finally came to he actually tried to punch me. "What are you doing, Krycek?" he'd snarled at me. His eyes were both completely blood shot and his nose was broken. The human captors had ripped three of his fingernails out of his left hand. He looked the worst I'd ever seen him.

"Take me back." He spat onto the ground, blood and snot. I laughed at him. There was sleet coming down and the temperature was dropping. Already I couldn't feel my toes.

"You're fucking nuts, Skinner. They were getting ready pull your Goddamn teeth to get you to talk." I was panting. Dragging Skinner hundred yards took a lot more effort than carrying Scully twice that.

"Mulder," Skinner said and spit more blood onto the frozen scrub grass. "Mulder shouldn't have let me go. I need to go back."

I wanted to shake him. "Have you noticed that it's fucking freezing out here?" I said. "They're way better in this stuff that we are."

"They'll know he's been working with the Rebels," Skinner choked out. I have to admire the loyalty Mulder had inspired in his previous life. Skinner would rather get tortured to death that have the aliens turn on Mulder.

Fuck, it was cold. "Come on, Skinner. " He had dropped to one knee. "Get up!" I didn't think I could drag him much farther.

"Scully." I said, yanking him up and pulling one arm over my shoulders. I said it just the way he had when he saw her, like it was something sacred, like a prayer. "If the aliens find out they can use her against him, they will. He's going to send her back and then we have to take her away from here, away from him."

Because Mulder couldn't stop listening to her when she was so close. He'd been blocking her by reciting poetry, humming, counting to a thousand but it was too big a temptation.

"Eventually they'll look into my head again," Mulder had told me, "and they'll find her there. And they'll use her."

The poor bastard, after the things they did to him, El Rico didn't matter. He'd never had a chance.

"I'll always hear her." He'd said it like it was a threat and I wasn't about to scoff at this new Mulder. "It just won't be so strong. Everything she touches and hears and sees." He put his hands on hips and turned away. Must have been Torture to have her so near, to be living inside her and have her completely unaware.

She was sleeping in his bed in back of us. He hadn't let anyone near her so she was still as dirty and disheveled as I'd last seen her. But even filthy with tangled hair and ragged clothes, she was still Scully: honorable and decent and the one person I believed could grant me absolution.

"When she wakes up, I'll bring her back to you," Mulder told me. He looked like he was going to cry then. His face crumpled and his breath hitched. I guess some things never change.

Skinner seemed to get better the closer we got to the camp. He stopped spitting blood and he walked on his own more easily. The guy had become the muscled Marine again since the invasion. I had a hard time trying to recall the softer bodied assistant director he had been. "How'd you hitch up with the rebels, anyway?" I asked him.

"That night at El Rico." Up ahead we could see the camp gate and we both sped up a little now that we had our goal in sight. "The rebels showed up after everyone had gone. No faces," he said.

We were trying to get warm by a smoking fire at the camp when word came about Margaret Scully. She'd been acting really flaky since we'd come to this camp and in her last hours of consciousness she kept repeating, "the evil, the evil." I thought that pretty much summed up all we had seen. She also asked to be buried outside of the camp fence. I figured the evil could get her just as easily no matter where we dug her grave, but Skinner promised her that he would see to it.

I tried to stay away. Scully had warned me often enough that I was to keep my distance from her mother. In two years I'd hardly spoken to the woman. Still, I regretted seeing her die. It would hit Scully hard.

I left Skinner in the dark, holding Margaret Scully's hand while she chanted about the evil and I went back to the fire. The smoke burned my eyes and lungs, but it gave the illusion of warmth. Camp Four was a shit hole. I would be glad to leave and take Scully somewhere Mulder couldn't feel the tears slide down her cheeks the rocks under her sleeping bag, or the scalpel slice just under her chip so we could sneak through camp checkpoints. Mulder sending her away would hit her hard too. I frowned thinking about dragging her out of here.

Through the campfire smoke I caught flashes of other dirty, hungry faces and they were all frowning at their own dejected thoughts.

I'd put a lot of faith in the possibility of something waiting after this crappy existence we all had. Something for me, Scully, Camp Four, and the rest of the fucking miserable human race. But at least I had faith now. I'd never had faith before.

I looked up at the sky. The damn explosions started again: our side, their side. It was hard to tell who was firing at who with the heavy sleet still in the air.

I flipped up the collar of my leather jacket, nudged the prosthesis back in place, and waited for Scully to come home.